For New Jersey Transit Commuters, a Bad Situation Is About to Get Worse

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Riders who rely on commuter rail to travel between New Jersey and New York City have had plenty to complain about in recent weeks. Soon, their journey will become even more unpleasant.

New Jersey Transit, which has been struggling for months to maintain its already reduced commuter train service, plans to take more trains off its schedule next month and to temporarily eliminate some routes, agency officials said Thursday.

The additional cancellations include 18 daily trains on five of its lines, as well as a suspension of all train service on a short rail segment in Princeton — fondly known as the Dinky — and weekend service on the Gladstone Branch of the Morris & Essex line, they said.

The statewide transit agency has been canceling trains on short notice, infuriating its customers as they have to scramble to get to work on time and keep appointments. New Jersey Transit, the country’s second-busiest commuter rail system, has blamed the failures on its rush to meet a Dec. 31 federal deadline to install an automatic braking system.

Officials have said that many of the agency’s locomotives and other equipment have been sidelined to complete the project. The equipment shortage has been compounded by a lack of engineers to drive the trains, they said. On some days this summer, New Jersey Transit canceled more than 20 trains.

Those cancellations came after the agency curtailed its service in the spring to accommodate the installation of the braking system, known as Positive Train Control. On Thursday, the agency’s executive director, Kevin Corbett, said the project was more than 65 percent complete and was on pace to be completed before the deadline.

Mr. Corbett said he expected to end the service reductions in mid-January. As a way to soften the blow, the agency will offer a 10 percent discount on all rail tickets in November, December and January.

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Workers install Positive Train Control equipment a contractor’s repair shop on Thursday.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

“As a daily rail commuter myself, I fully understand the impact this has on people’s lives,” Mr. Corbett said.

During that three-month shift, trains will be more crowded, Mr. Corbett said. He said the Morris & Essex train he regularly rides home from his office in Newark is one of the trains that will be removed from the schedule next month.

He and other New Jersey Transit officials showed reporters how the equipment was being installed on 12 of the agency’s train cars at a contractor’s repair shop in this central New Jersey town. Workers crouched on rails beneath the cars, consulting manuals as they turned wrenches and sprayed lubricant on the parts they attached to the undercarriages.

The system involves transponders that receive signals to warn engineers when their trains are exceeding the speed. If an engineer does not respond to the warning tone or flashing light, the system will apply the brakes to slow or stop the train.

Installing the equipment is a complex task that has vexed several passenger railroads in the region. The Federal Railroad Administration, which is monitoring progress on the installation, reported that at the end of June, New Jersey Transit had outfitted just 26 percent of its locomotives, compared with 100 percent for the Long Island Rail Road, 82 percent for Amtrak and 77 percent for Metro-North Railroad.

Mr. Corbett admitted that New Jersey Transit had lagged behind several other commuter railroads coming into 2018. But he said that the agency has narrowed the gap and could catch up to its competitors in the next few months. He said most of the commuter railroads, like New Jersey Transit, would seek a two-year extension from federal regulators that would allow them until the end of 2020 to have Positive Train Control working on all of their trains throughout their networks of tracks.

Mr. Corbett said the additional curtailment of service, scheduled to begin Oct. 14, was an admission that the agency’s new management underestimated how detrimental the installation project would be to New Jersey Transit’s ability to maintain its service.

The trains being removed from the schedule include eight on the Morris & Essex line, four on the Main/Bergen County line, three on the Northeast Corridor, two on the North Jersey Coast Line and one on the Montclair-Boonton line. The Morris & Essex line will also have all of the weekend train service on its Gladstone Branch replaced with buses for the three months, though the trains will operate on three holidays: Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents’ Day.

The Dinky, which shuttles passengers between the campus of Princeton University and the Princeton Junction station on the Northeast Corridor, will be replaced with buses from mid-October to mid-January, New Jersey Transit said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: N.J. Transit Commuters to Face More Canceled Trains Starting Next Month. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe